Tuesday, October 28, 2008

I write this on a train to London, where I'm due to record a talk for Radio 3 on children's thinking. I'll be talking about Vygotsky's theory of inner speech development and drawing some connections to the experience of voice-hearing. I'll post further details on the talk when I know them.

Writing the talk has made me think a lot about how we might get more reliable information about young children's experience. I see this as a big part of my fellowship at the IAS, and the book on thinking that I am working on. Watch out for some more ideas on this as I go on. As ever, I'd be fascinated to hear any ideas or suggestions!

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Join me tomorrow (Monday 20 October) for a talk at Café Scientifique, Urban Café, Dance City, Newcastle upon Tyne. My title will be 'How Studying Children's Minds Leads to Big Ideas', and I will be focusing on some biggies like identity, rationality, love and God. The event is free and you can just show up; no need to book.

The Newcastle Journal ran a piece by me on Saturday, unfortunately not available online. I will also be talking on BBC Radio Newcastle's morning show at 11.15 tomorrow.

Friday, October 17, 2008

'Daddy. I've got to tell you what I did last night when you were out.'

He has come into our bed for a cuddle. It is a dark early morning, and nobody really wants to get up.

'OK,' I yawn. 'What did you do?'

'I made something. It's to do with making.'

'What did you make?'

'I made a r... r... r...'

I know this game, because we play it with him all the time. We keep in mind the idea we want him to guess, repeat the initial phoneme, and see if he can fill in the rest.

'A rabbit?'

'No.'

'A racetrack?'

'No. A really...'

'Oh. I see. R for really. A really what?'

'A really g... g... g...'

'Good?'

'Uh huh. A really good c... c... c...'

'Complicated?'

'No, countryside. A really good countryside.'

Nouns and adjectives. Adjectives and adverbs. What makes a noun like countryside a better candidate for the 'missing ending' game than these other components of language? As words that stand for things, we tend to think of nouns as the support structures of our conversation. They are the pillars that the whole thing is built around. Words like adjectives and adverbs are just the decoration. But a four-year-old won't necessarily see it like that. For him, all words are created equal. They are all sounds that you have to labour to make, with your tongue, mouth and lips. They are all important in saying what you want to say.

Monday, October 13, 2008

And so we have frequently, in recent months, come to debate the Big Fella's role in furnishing us with what there is. I am pretty convinced about evolution by natural selection, although I did spend much of my Cambridge interview trying to convince the indulgent don opposite that the universe had not been around long enough for us to have inched towards perfection by such careful degrees. So I find it hard to tell Isaac that anyone made anything, in the sense of setting out with an intention (that most human of mental quantities) and then assiduously seeing it through. I'm one of the group of people for whom Richard Dawkins reserves some of the largest doses of his prodigious contempt: those who would claim that religious belief gives human beings a rewarding, affirming narrative that helps them to make sense of their lives. (Read RD's preface to the revised edition of The God Delusion to see why he believes that this 'patronising' attitude won't do.) I can cope with the wrath of Dawkins, but not the disappointment of my own child. Isaac wants answers, and I'm the one who's supposed to be giving them.

How creationist should we be with our kids? Some recent research suggests that, by coming over all Dawkins with our little ones, we might be wasting our time. In his wonderful Descartes' Baby, Paul Bloom reviews some findings that children's belief in creation stems from a natural tendency to attribute intention where in fact there is none. As part of the process of acquiring a theory of mind, children's mind-reading sometimes hits the wrong targets, and sees, for example, a mountain range as having been put there on purpose, by some higher, invisible miglior fabbro.

It’s easy to see why people believe in a Creator. So much is mysterious: why the sun rises, how gases fuse to make water, how blind natural selection could have launched birds into the air. Through the centuries, children have wanted answers to these questions, and adults have had to try to find ways of explaining them. If Bloom is right, those adults needn’t have bothered. The explanations were already at hand. Until children’s thinking is sufficiently developed to cope with the hard science, the belief that God or some other supernatural being is responsible for all these miracles comes to youngsters as naturally as language does.

So I have to manage Isaac's perfectly natural creationist leanings while still being honest to my own truth. It has the makings of a classic fudge. God made the world possible, I tell him, and then Nature did the rest. I'm starting to sound like the Archbishop of Canterbury:

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Many thanks to all who have been following the blog. I'm constantly looking for ways to improve it, so if you have ideas about things to be included or changes to make then please let me know. You can find me on Facebook here, or you can send an email through my website by clicking here. Otherwise just leave a comment on this post.

Buy A Box Of Birds

Buy Pieces of Light (UK)

A Box of Birds: Reviews

'Arrestingly good prose… A thought-provoking novel that wrestles with the fundamentals of human nature.' Financial Times

'The plot, which flies past at genuine ‘page turner’ pace, involves a race to map the (fictional) Lorenzo Circuit, ‘the deep root-system of the self… the basis of memory, emotion and consciousness in the human brain’… I’m grateful for the siren warnings from the storytelling machine that is Charles Fernyhough.' The Psychologist

'A pleasantly sardonic narrator… There is… a certain edgy propulsion to the story, and the reveal of what is really going on in the bowels of Sansom’s research centre is deliciously horrible and deftly understated.' Guardian

'Part love story, part race against time to beat the baddies, Fernyhough can certainly write.' Daily Mail

'It’s rare these days to read a writer who cares about ideas in the way that the great nineteenth-century novelists did... This is both a serious novel and a great read.' Sara Maitland

'Exhilarating, thought-provoking and well worth the wait.' Andrew Crumey

Pieces of Light: Reviews

'Pieces of Light is utterly fascinating and superbly written. I learned more about memory from this book than any other. There are few science books around of this class.' Guardian

'Thoughtful… a deft guide to discoveries that have led memory researchers to stress the centrality of storytelling.' Booklist

'As absorbing as it is thought-provoking.' Sunday Business Post

'Remarkable storytelling skills... Seamlessly intersperses the personal aspects of [his] journey with descriptions of cutting-edge research into spatial naviation and memory manipulation, as well as new ideas about how memory works.' Moheb Costandi, Scientific American MIND

'With elegance and clinical sympathy, Fernyhough tells the stories of patients with various forms of brain damage that result in amnesia... a good, accessible read for anyone interested in their own recollections.' Professor Steven Rose, BBC Focus Magazine

'An absorbing guidebook to the mysterious terrain of human memory... In the tradition of Oliver Sacks’ casually shrewd scientific writing, the book blends dispatches from the frontiers of science with compassionate human anecdotes. Fernyhough’s enthralling narrative delivers gripping insight on the way memories shape our lives.'Editors’ Choice for w/c 19 March, iBookstore

'Weaving scientific research from psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology, Fernyhough explains that our brains don’t record experiences as cameras do; rather, we store key elements, then reconstruct the experiences when we need them, imbuing them with present-day feelings and the benefit of hindsight.' Washington Post(read more)

'In its stunning blend of the literary with the scientific, Pieces of Light illuminates ordinary and extraordinary stories to remind us that who we are now has everything to do with who we were once, and that identity itself is intricately rooted in transporting moments of remembrance. We are what we remember.' André Aciman, author of Out of Egypt and Harvard Square

'His examination [is] welcoming and accessible to lay readers. His analysis is wide-ranging... He also covers a wide swath of literary and historical ground... A refreshingly social take on an intensely personal experience.' Publishers Weekly (read more)

'A multidisciplinary approach to explaining memory... Will be intriguing for readers interested in the borderlands where memoir, fiction and science overlap.' Kirkus Reviews (read more)

'In this lyrical exploration of our powers of recall, psychologist and novelist Charles Fernyhough argues that our memories are worth cherishing - even though some of what we think we remember is, in fact, fiction.' New Scientist Books of the Year (read more)

'In Pieces of Light, Charles Fernyhough has had the arresting idea of writing a book about memory that is also a memoir. As a psychologist clearly well up on the latest research, he shows how memory itself relies on language and storytelling. Investigating his own memories with a writerly eye, he brings to vibrant life scenes from a childhood refreshingly free of misery.' Sunday Times Books of the Year (read more)

'In his hybrid of autobiography, journalism and pop psychology, Fernyhough lets the stories speak for themselves to highlight memory’s personal, subjective and fragile qualities. Fernyhough takes us on a captivating journey into the mind. And he does so with great style.' Telegraph (read more)

'Outstanding… Fernyhough’s skills as a writer are evident both in the beautiful prose and in the way he uses literature to illustrate his argument… He draws on both science and art to marvellous effect.' Observer (read more)

'Restrained and lyrical... an immense pleasure.' New Scientist (read more)

'A sophisticated blend of findings from science, ideas from literature and examples from personal narratives… refreshing, well judged and at times moving. This is an unusual book but a very rewarding one.' Times Higher Education (read more)

'Fernyhough deftly guides us through memory's many facets... Often using himself as a test case, he adds context with research and snippets from a raft of great writers. A thoughtful study of how we make sense of ourselves.' Nature (read more)

'Absorbing... In offering us a meditation on memory, Fernyhough has something important to say about one of the forces that is central to our lives.' The Lady (read more)

'Fernyhough is a gifted writer who can turn any experience into lively prose... The stories in Pieces of Light... will entertain anyone who reads them.' Financial Times (read more)

'Many popular science writers try to blend the autobiographical and the anecdotal into their work; few do it as seamlessly and successfully as Charles Fernyhough.' Blackwell's Book Podcasts (read more)

'Fernyhough argues that we don’t simply possess a memory; we reconstruct it anew every time we need to remember… Through his own experiences and those of others, from the very young to the very old, he explores the mystery of remembering and the ambiguity of forgetting.' Saga Magazine

'An enthralling investigation of that ‘thing’ we call memory… manages to write about complex things in a clear and understandable way.' Ian McMillan, The Verb

'Pieces of Light will both linger in your memory and change the way you think about it.’ Daniel L. Schacter